Sunday, December 22, 2013

NOTE: ALL PICTURES WHICH I COPIED ARE FROM: http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/CMJGStutthof.pdf -

AND MIGHT GIVE BETTER DEFINITION AND A CLEARER IMAGE

APPENDIX:
HISTORICAL REVISIONISM-THE STUTTHOF GAS CHAMBER-
Structure and Method of Functioning: ABRIDGED- for further reading refer to:http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/CMJGStutthof.pdf
Before examining the question of the mass gassing of human beings, the structure and functioning of the reported killing installation must first be examined.
There are no surviving documents relating to the Stutthof gas chamber, located approximately 10 meters north of the crematorium. According to the official historiography, it was built in 1943 for dis-infestation purposes.
The gas chamber (photo 1) is a small, rectangular structure 8.5 meters in length, 3.5 meters in width, and 2.55 meters in height (exterior measurements). The walls are of ordinary brick masonry; the ceiling is of reinforced concrete. The chamber had two gas-tight steel doors, located opposite each other. The steel doors were removed before the arrival of the Soviet troops, probably upon instructions from the camp authorities, as can be seen from a Soviet photograph taken in 1945 (photograph 2). The doors in existence today, of light sheet steel (photos 3 and 4), were installed after the liberation. To the left of the south door, on the exterior wall, is a small brick
oven (photos 5 and 6); the front side of the oven contains two small metal doors. The upper door is the fire door; the lower one is the ash door. The first was used to seal the coke-fired combustion chamber, containing
a grid of diagonal rods. An opening pierced in the rear wall links the combustion chamber to a cast iron pipe inside the gas chamber. The oven doors bear the inscription “Patent Bzrajber”.
The interior volume of the chamber is 8 m × 3 m × 2.50 m. The floor is of perforated brick; the holes are filled with cement. The walls are whitewashed; the ceiling is of rough cement. At oven height, the above mentioned cast iron pipe, approximately 25 cm in diameter, runs along the west wall; the pipe then bends at a right angle, rises perpendicularly up the north wall (photo 8) and leads out of the roof of the chamber into a brick chimney (photo 9). Today, this pipe is almost enclosed by a wall, forming a solid section 65-cm high and 50 cm wide. It is only uncovered in short sections visible in photo 7. As may be seen in a Soviet photograph taken after the liberation of the camp, the first half of the pipe was originally surrounded by a wall of perforated brick, of the type used in construction of the floor; the other half was uncovered. A circular opening 15-cm in diameter was pierced in the middle of the ceiling (photo 10). Above is a metal shaft with a lid (photo 11). Directly beneath the above-mentioned opening in the floor is a small drain (photo 12) formerly equipped with a protective grate.
Enormous migrating stains of iron cyanide (Prussian Blue) are visible on all four inside walls of the chamber, clearly proving the use of hydro-cyanic acid gas in this building (photo 13). Blue pigmentation has also formed around the circular opening in the ceiling. Finally, enormous blue stains are visible on the exterior walls of the chamber,particularly, on the east (photos 14 and 15) and west walls (photos (16 and 17), and, to a lesser extent, near the doors on the north and south walls as well (photos 5 and 9). This gas chamber may appear to have been rather crudely constructed in comparison with the Degesch circulation air installations for disinfestation with Zyklon B, but it was quite capable of functioning effectively. The relatively low temperature required for the rapid evaporation of hydrocyanic acid out of the granular carrier was ensured by the combustion products of the oven; the combustion products heated the cast iron pipe, as well as the walls of perforated brickwork partially surrounding the pipe, and then rose through the chimney into the open air. The small shaft in the ceiling made it possible to shake out the Zyklon B even with the door closed, after covering the opening of the drain in the floor with paper. Simultaneously opening the two doors along the north-south-west axis achieved rather rapid and efficient ventilation. This was accelerated by the heat which continued to radiate all along the pipe; if the fire was kept burning during ventilation as well, the result was an air flow inside the chamber which would have been sufficient to ensure an almost complete air exchange in a short time. Contrary to J.-C. Pressac’s impression, the opening in the ceiling was quite necessary to the functioning of the installation. Simply sprinkling Zyklon B granulate on the floor would have been prevented by the metal rack upon which the articles of clothing were to be hung and then dis-infested, occupying the entire surface area of the gas chamber right up to the doors. That this opening was in-stalled on the murderous instructions of Rudolf Höß, was simply invented by Pressac. Nevertheless, the use of these delousing chambers in their original condition for the killing of human beings would have been possible in a purely technical sense. The time periods mentioned in the Soviet Expert Commission, as well as the method of procedure described in the report, lie with the realm of the possible, at least theoretically. [Jean-Claude Pressac was a French chemist and pharmacist who later became a published authority on the Holocaust of World War II.Pressac was originally a Holocaust denier who, with Robert Faurisson, attempted to disprove what he considered historically inaccurate depictions of the concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau as extermination camps. Upon visiting Auschwitz in 1979, however, Pressac was able to view first-hand the extensive archive of construction documents which had survived due to being located in the construction office rather than the administrative offices. These convinced him that his former views were in error, an event he describes in the postface of Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, saying that he "nearly did away with myself one evening in October 1979 in the main camp, the Stammlager, overwhelmed by the evidence and by despair". He published his conclusions along with much of the underlying evidence in his 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers. In his 1993 Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz, he further delineated the operation of the crematoria at Auschwitz, and their integration into the larger Nazi program to eradicate the Jews of Europe. Pressac estimates that between 631,000 and 711,000 were killed at Auschwitz.sic]

(1) Delousing chamber at Stutthof, in its present condition (1997). To the right: one of the two railway carriages standing on the narrow-gauge railway.

(2)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, viewed from the south-west. Soviet photo taken in 1945. The rectangular frames of the gas-tight door is visible on the south side.

(3)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, viewed from the south. The door today is of lightweight sheet metal, to protect the museum-like interior.

(4)Delousing chamber in Stutthof, viewed from the south. The door today. It is not alleged that this door is the original.

(5)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, viewed from the south. The oven was used to heat the air inside of the delousing chamber.

(6)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, viewed from the south. The oven was used to heat the air inside the delousong chamber. Above the fire door, Below: The ash door

(8)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, interior view, westwall; cast iron connection pipe to the oven located outside the delousing chamber and used to heat the air inside the

chamber. The pipe was originally surrounded by masonry similar to that visible in the photograph, but of perforated brick. One of these bricks is still visible today, underneath

and behind the pipe (circle)

(9)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, viewed from the north. Upper right: the oven chimney, at the foot of which is a small peephole (below, to the right of the door). Between this

peep-hole and the chimney, the brick exhibits the typical blue pigmentation caused by iron cyanide.

(10)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, interior. Circular opening in the middle of the reinforced concrete roof. Note the typical blue pigmentation caused by iron cyanide. This

opening was used for the introduction of Zyklon B into the delousing chamber.

(11)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, roof. Metallic pipe with lid, leading to the introduction hatch. Soviet photograph taken in 1945. Next to the pipe stands a can of Zyklon B.

(16)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, east side. Right: the second of two narrow-gauge railway carriages is visible behind the cross. To the right: the crematorium, rebuilt after the war

(17)Delousing chamber at Stutthof, east side. Blue stains on the wall prove the use of Zyklon B.

(18)The two coke-fuelled crematory ovens built by H. Kori, viewed after the liberation of the camp (1945).

THE CREMATION
The following, therefore, is intended to raise the question from the historical point of view: First, of course, a few remarks on the camp crematorium are in order. The crematorium, of course, plays quite a second-rate role in connection with the reported extermination of human beings, but the data of eyewitnesses with relation to its function and capacity are a solid criterion for an evaluation of their general credibility. In Stutthof, two of the coke-fueled ovens were installed by the H. Kori concern (photo 18); the same firm also installed one oil-fired oven. These three ovens are exhibited in the crematorium reconstructed by the Poles after the war.
There are no surviving documents relating to the crematorium. All statements contained in the technical literature on this installation are based on eyewitness testimonies. The most detailed information is found in Ewa Ferenc, quote: “The plans of the camp crematorium were fulfilled with the plans of the new camp. The camp was to have had eight double ovens and one morgue, to be linked to the ovens by a lift. A gold workshop with a safe and 4 rooms measuring 20 m x 2 m in surface area were to be connected to the crematorium. On the plan, the rooms were designated with the letters z.b.V. (zur besonderen Verfügung) [for special duty]. The ovens
were to cremate approximately 100 corpses in one hour. According to the plans, the whole crematorium was to be surrounded by a high wall. The plan, however, was not put into effect.”
As a source, the Polish historian refers to the testimony of the former inmate Wacaw Lewandowski. The latter, however, provided a distorted description of the original crematorium project. A document from the Central Building Administration of Auschwitz offers a background explanation: on June 15, 1942, the Bauleitung of Stutthof concentration camp requested the Central Building Administration of Auschwitz for information on the installation of a crematorium. The head of the Central Building Administration, SS Hauptsturmführer Karl Bischoff, replied on July 10, enclosing the plans for the future Crematorium II of Birkenau, providing for the construction of “5 three muffle crematory ovens”. Bischoff also reported that, according to the oven manufacturer, Topf, the period of time required for the cremation of one corpse amounted to one half hour. This information was not however in accordance with reality, but was rather the reflection of wishful thinking. In actual fact, the average cremation time for a corpse amounted to one hour. The witness Lewandowski therefore, not only got the number of ovens wrong, but mentioned the wrong model as well (“eight double ovens” instead of five three muffle ovens); he also exaggerated the crematory capacity by three-fold (six corpses instead of two), in
comparison to the capacity reported by Topf. E. Ferenc continues: “In the summer of 1942, an oil-fueled crematory oven was delivered. It was installed on the east side of the infirmary, with a wooden roof built over it; the terrain of the crematorium was set apart from the camp. The oven was in operation approximately one half year. It burnt 5-6 corpses in 45 minutes, using approximately 5 litres of oil to do so. The first cremation took place on September 1, 1942 […] At the end of 1942, the Kori Corporation in Berlin built two walled crematory ovens and one chimney 18 meters long. An oven burnt 7-8 corpses in 45 minutes. Over the oven, a barrack of wood was constructed; this burnt down in the night of December 3-4. For this reason, the wooden barrack was replaced by a stone barrack, with a room for the heater, toilets, and two small rooms ‘z.b.V.’ [for special duty] After
reconstruction, the crematorium began to ‘work’ again on December 26, 1944. Until then, the corpses of inmates were burnt in a field crematorium.
This information, again exclusively based on eyewitness reports, is on a weak footing as well, both historically and technically. As regards the historical aspects, the only known original plan of the camp, which dates back to January 25, 1943, contains no designation of a crematorium—which means that it was not even begun at the time. The story of the burnt barrack therefore presumably relates to the oil-fueled oven. That this was put out of operation after only six months of use—even before the stationary ovens were built—is highly improbable. That not one single oven was in operation for fully three years—until December 26, 1944—is refuted by several
documents, first of all the death registry, the section of which relating to the time period between January and April 1944 has survived, and which contains an indication of cremation dates. Technically speaking, it is impossible to burn five to six corpses in 45 minutes in an oil-fueled Kori oven. The book on Majdanek discusses a German report attributing a capacity of 50 corpses in 12 hours to this type of oven. The hypothesis at that time—that such a high capacity was actually within the realm possibility under ordinary circumstances—is refuted by the documentation relating to the oil-fueled ovens of the crematorium at Theresienstadt, which was still unknown at that time. These ovens were very much bigger than the Kori ovens, but could only cremate two corpses per hour. The capacity of the oil-fueled Kori Ovens could under no circumstances have been higher.
The claim that seven to eight corpses could be cremated in one oil-fueled Kori oven in 45 minutes is quite absurd; the documentation on the coke-fueled Kori ovens at the Dutch Westerbork transit camp proves that a cremation took an average of 50 minutes. All this shows that the official Polish historiography, as well as the Soviet expert report quoted in the second chapter relating to the capacity of the crematory ovens at Stutthof, is devoid of all scientific basis. In particular, the statement contained in the Soviet report that 12 corpses could normally be introduced into one combustion chamber, and that they could be cremated in only 50 minutes, is pure nonsense:– first, the calculations of the Soviet “experts” are based upon the theoretical volume of the combustion chamber and corpses, as if the first were a container and the second a liquid, a certain quantity of which could simply be poured into the container;– second, cramming the combustion chamber with 12 corpses—which would be infeasible in any case—would have interrupted the combustion process in the coke ovens due to lack of draft. Even in the oil-fueled ovens, combustion would have been impossible, because the flame would have been extinguished by the corpses stacked up near the combustion nozzle.– third, even if combustion was possible—and it was not—it would have taken ten to twelve times as long as the time indicated. Precisely this was true, in particular, of the animal corpse combustion installations built by the Kori Corporation—the only existing oven comparable to the ovens reported for Stutthof.
[The combustion of the coke in the gas generator of a coke oven is directly dependent upon the suction draft of the chimney, which must be sufficiently large to overcome the resistance of the layer of coke against the passage of combustion air through the layer of coke. Cramming the combustion chamber with 12 corpses would have blocked the connection opening between the gas generator and the combustion chamber as well as the combustion gas outlet, which was located behind the introduction door on the vault of the combustion chamber. For this reason, the cremation process would have immediately come to a full stop.
Source: HOLOCAUST Handbooks Series, Vol. 4: Further reading will be necessary to complete this narrative.
CONCLUSION
The official history of events at Stutthof concentration camp is a crass demonstration of the fact that the victors’ official version of history has reached a dead end. In 1947, the Communist “Commission for the Investigation of the German Crimes in Poland” alleged that Stutthof had been used as a ‘makeshift’ extermination camp. The number of victims was summarily established at 65,000, and it was alleged that many inmates had been murdered in the Stutthof delousing chamber. This official version of the camp history was not even revised after the end of Communist domination in Poland; this is in contrast to Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the number of victims—although incomparably more grossly exaggerated than was the case at Stutthof— was at least massively reduced. Western historians have never made any attempt to obtain knowledge about Stutthof through their own efforts; insofar as they have expressed any views on the subject at hall, they have been content to parrot the official Polish version. Today, more than half a century after the end of WWII, it is high time to approach the topic in a correct manner, and revise the distorted propaganda image of the camp. To do so does in no way trivialize the actual sufferings of Stutthof inmates; our research in no way denigrates the memory of the 26,000 human beings who actually died in the camp, or of the victims of the evacuation. Quite the contrary. The official historiography of National Socialist concentration camps contains endless discussion of imaginary victims, but very little discussion of the real victims of these camps; yet only the latter are worthy of our sympathy.
Source:
Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno, in: 'Concentration Camp Stutthof and its Function in National Socialist Jewish Policy.

Death on the gallows
The following gut-twisting images are among a number to be found here.

4th July1946 Biskupia Gorka ( Stolzenberg ) near Gdansk (Danzig) PolandAbove: on one end of the gallows row, the truck has just pulled away from Jenny Wanda Barkmann
— a modish Hamburg lass in her mid-20’s known to Stutthof prisoners as
“the Beautiful Specter” for her cruelty. Down the row, one can see that
some of the prisoners are already swinging, while others have not yet
been dropped.

Between 25th April and 31th May before the Special Law Court at Danzig a trial was held against guards of the Stutthof Concentration Camp The accused were :

1. Camp’s Commandant Johann Pauls – death by hanging

2. SS-Aufseherin Jenny Wanda Barkmann – death by hanging

3. SS-Aufseherin Elisabeth Becker – death by hanging

4. SS-Aufseherin Wanda Klaff – death by hanging

5. SS-Aufseherin Ewa Paradies – death by hanging

6. SS-Aufseherin Gerda Steinhoff – death by hanging

7. SS-Aufseherin a Beilhardt - 5 years in prison

8. Kapo Joseph Reiter – death by hanging

9. Kapo Waclaw Kozlowski – death by hanging

10. Kapo Franciszek Szopiñski – death by hanging

11. Kapo Jan Brajt – death by hanging

12. Sztubowy Tadeusz Kopczyñski – death by hanging

13. Kapo Kazimierz Kowalski – 3 years in prison

14. Kapo Aleksy Duzdal – not guilty

15. Kapo Jan Preiss – not guilty

16. Kapo Marian Zielkowski – died of a heart attack 25th August 1945 in prison

The bench of the accused

First row from left to right : Elisabeth Becker, Gerda Steinhoff, Wanda Klaff

Second row : Erna Beilhardt , Jenny Wanda Barkmann

At the trial the SS-women behaved insolently. During the interruptions they giggled and joked. Jenny Barkmann changed her hair-do every day and flirted with the guards. When public prosecutor asked for capital punishment Klaff, Steinhoff, Becker and Paradies cried and pleaded for her life Only Jenny Barkmann remained calm .

The accused with Polish guards at the location of the KZ Stutthof

first row from left to right : Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff

The hands of the prisoners were tied behind their back and the feet were tied together

Right : Elisabeth Becker

( the executioner just passed the noose around her neck ) ,

left (standing) : Wanda Klaff

The hands of the prisoners were tied behind their back and the feet were tied together. The SS-women sat on chairs and had their hands tied in the back . For the execution they were lifted up on the chairs , this was very difficult as they had their legs already tied at the ankles.

A few moments before the execution :

from right to left : Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker , Wanda Klaff, Gerda SteinhoffUpon hearing her sentence, Jenny Barkmann retorted, “Life is indeed a
pleasure, and pleasures are usually short.” (More about Barkmann,
including trial photos, here.) In this closer view of her, just as in the first photo, she is still alive and struggling. Next to her, Ewa Paradies, another guard, is prepared for the same fate.

Wanda Klaff

Wanda Klaff

Gerda Steinhoff

The disposition of the gallows

The execution started at 5.00 pm

The prisoners were noosed and then pushed from the ramp of the trucks Jenny Barkmann has just been hanged and struggles at the end of the rope while Ewa Paradies is being noosed by her executioner. In the background (white dress): Wanda Klaff . Already hanging with the back to the camera ( dark blouse, white skirt) : Gerda Steinhoff

After the hanging of the Nazi war criminals

Gerda SteinhoffThe central triple gallows. Commandant Johann Pauls hangs in the middle with Gerda Steinhoff — one of the senior female guards — in the foreground. The line of five male kapos recedes behind them into the enormous crowd of onlookers.

The information about the coming execution were given the day before, on 3th July 1946 (Wednesday), in the newspaper “Dziennik Baltycki”: “Stutthof’s war criminals will be publicly hanged in Gdañsk”.

It is believed that the execution was filmed. During the visit of Stutthof’s Museum a film “Stutthof’s gallows” is being shown. In this film (newsreel) there are scenes of the SS-women in the accused bench , for instance Jenny Barkmann, when she is standing up for the death verdict. Maybe the complete film showing the executions is in the Museum's archives or perhaps in a Russian archiv. The Polish Clergy strongly opposed the public hanging, including its method of strangulation, as the entire procedure had an atmosphere of a fun-fair. Food-stalls were opened and ice-cream was freely available for the consumption to the public. This type of hanging was never repeated. The public execution took place on 4 July 1946 along with ten other victims on the hill Biskupia Górka (German Stolzenberg) not far from Gdansk (Danzig). The condemned were meant to be executed by the so-called Slow Hanging, for the entertainment of the public in which the condemned were driven slowly off the tail gate of the back of trucks and thus due to the low hight, strangled slowly by hanging. This could last for a full 20-minute of agony and straggle of the hanged before death sat in. Since the condemned were hanged in succession with twelve minuets intervals they could see what was in store for them. Jenny Barkmann was the first of those convicted on whom this procedure was performed by her executioner , a former concentration camp inmate.

THE TRIAL THE ACCUSED THE EXECUTION

The camp was liberated by the Russians on May 10th, 1945 and the Commandant, Johann Pauls, and some of his staff were put on trial by the Polish Special Law Court at Danzig between April 25th and May 31st, 1946. All were represented by counsel. Eleven of the defendants, five women and six men, were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. These were Johann Pauls, SS-Aufseherins Jenny Wanda Barkmann, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Ewa Paradies, Gerda Steinhoff and five other men who had been Kapo's in the camp.
View of Stutthof after Liberation

They had all pleaded "not guilty" to the general charge of war crimes and the women did not seem to take the trial too seriously until the end. After the sentence, they appealed for clemency but these appeals were rejected by the Polish president. Thus all 11 were publicly hanged before a large crowd, estimated at several thousand, at 5.00 p.m. on July 4th, 1946 at Biskupia Gorka hill near Danzig. A row of simple gallows had been set up in a large open area, four double ones with a triple gallows in the middle. A fleet of open trucks brought the prisoners to the execution ground, their hands and legs tied with cords. The trucks were backed under the gallows and the condemned made to stand on the tailboards or on the chairs on which they had sat. A simple cord noose was put round their necks and when the preparations were complete, each truck was driven forward leaving them suspended. They were not hooded and given only a short drop, and as can be seen from the photos, some of them struggled for some time after suspension. It is alleged that one man and two women (un-named) struggled and fought with their guards prior to being hanged, although the others seemed to accept their fate calmly. The whole event was recorded by official press photographers, hence the clarity of the pictures.

Twenty four year old Jenny Wanda Barkmann was thought to be from Hamburg and was nicknamed "The Beautiful Spectre" by the camp inmates who considered her to be a ruthless killer. She was arrested in May 1945 at a railway station near Danzig trying to escape. At her trial she is reported to have flirted with her male guards and wore a different hairstyle each day. She is reported to have said after being condemned: "Life is a pleasure and pleasure as a rule is a short distance".

Elizabeth Becker was not quite 23 years old and had been born locally on the 20th of July 1923 at Nowy Staw near Danzig. She had married in 1936 and had been a member of the NSDAP and the BDM from 1938 to 1940. She worked in agriculture from 1941 to 1944 in Nowy Staw and joined the staff of Stutthof in September 1944 becoming an SS Aufseherin in SK-III Stutthof (the women’s camp) where she made selections for the gas chambers. After she was condemned, she submitted an appeal for commutation of her death sentence to the Polish president. The court recommended the commutation and substitution of a 15 year term of imprisonment because she had committed far fewer and less dreadful crimes than the others. The president, Boleslaw Bierut, however, rejected this request and she was executed with the rest of the women.

Wanda Klaff (nee Kalacinski) was of German origin but had been born in Danzig on the 6th of March 1922. When she left school in 1938 she initially worked in a jam factory, leaving in 1942 to get married to one Willy Gapes and becoming a housewife. In 1944 Wanda joined the staff at Stutthof satellite camp at Praust, moving later to Russoschin sub-camp. She contracted typhoid and was hospitalised in Danzig where she was arrested on the June the 11th, 1945. It would appear form the photos that Wanda, unlike the other four, was hanged by a woman, rather than a male former camp inmate.

Gerda Steinhoff was 24 and also from Danzig. She worked on a farm in Tygenhagen and later in a baker's shop in Danzig until 1944. She married in January 1944 and had one child. She went to work for the SS at Stutthof in October 1944 and was quickly promoted to Oberaufseherin at KZ Danzig (a satellite of Stutthof). In January 1945, she moved to KZ Bydgoszcz (another satellite camp) where she remained until it was liberated. She received the “Iron Cross” for her wartime efforts. She was arrested by Polish police on the 25th of May 1945.

Ewa Paradies was born at Lauenburg, (now Lebork) in Poland on the 17th of December 1920 and had various jobs after leaving school in 1935. She joined the staff of Stutthof SK-III in August 1944 and was trained as an Aufseherin, being transferred to the Bromberg-Ost subcamp of Stutthof in October 1944 and returning to Stutthof in January 1945. She was arrested in May 1945 at Lauenburg....

EPILOGUE

One can only wonder, looking back from 70 years later what turned these women into virtual monsters. Was it their total belief in the rightness of Hitler's policies or did they possess a latent sadism or perhaps a mixture of both? It is terrifying the acts that people can commit when they are out of control and have no fear of the consequences. I suspect that these women thought that Germany would win the war and that they would rise in the regime. Typically, they viewed their prisoners as "Dreck," the German for dirt and as sub-humans (Untermenschen). Therefore, the prisoners' lives and feelings were completely irrelevant, and it was just a simple matter of controlling them through fear and brutal repression. One wonders too whether they just became inured to the continuous acts of cruelty. Many of the people tried for war crimes insisted that they were just carrying out orders from above but this doesn't really ring true, either now or to the judges at their tribunals, when one looks at the acts of sadism that they dished out on their prisoners.

It is easy to have sympathy with the young women from Stutthof, whose unnecessarily cruel executions were so well documented, but one must remember what they did. As a young soldier said to Pierrepoint on the eve of the hangings of the Belsen women, "if you had been in Belsen under this lot, you wouldn't be able to feel sorry for them." (Pierrepoint had expressed some sympathy for the female prisoners. What is rarely mentioned that the original hangman, Ronald Cook, refused to hang Irma Grese, Or for that matter any female. (She would sing German folk ballads at night in her cell.'STIRB NICHT' 'Don't die'. She hummed this tune as she walked to the gallows) and Cook was replaced by Pierrepoint, who had to be flown in from Ireland or England, who was willing to perform the task. Major Jerome Burdik ordered him (Ronald Cook) to hang her, and that night he went home and shot himself. Albert Pierrepoint was on record as the hangman but in 1978 two of Irma's MPs revealed the truth. Sgt O'Hare and Cpl Rick Smith were court marshalled for refusing to walk her to the gallows. Pierrepoint, as an experienced hangman may have miscalculated her weight, which is doubtful, or the length of the drop, her neck did not break and she struggled for more than three minutes before she crossed the great divide.

Alleged photograph of the notoriousIrma Grese

Irma Grese

The gallows where Irma Grese was executed

There was apparently an altercation with Pierrepoint, when he tried to put the black hood over Grese's head, she refused the hood as the hangman tried to put the rope over her head
she became violent, and fought to be touched. Pierrepoint then slapped
her repeatedly and forced the rope over her neck, but not in the
prescribed manner, probably resulting in strangulation. (Pierrepoint did this without conscience or human feeling, only motivated
by greed, to ensure that he received a set fee for each hanging and this was the reason that he resigned in 1956 over a disagreement with the Home Office about his
fees. In January 1956, he had gone to Strangeways Prison, Manchester, to
officiate at the execution of Thomas Bancroft, who was reprieved less
than 12 hours before his scheduled execution, when Pierrepoint was
already present making his preparations – the first time in his career
that this had happened in England. He claimed his full fee of £15 (£317
when adjusted for inflation) but the under-sheriff of Lancashire offered
only £1. However in my opinion he was a killer rather than a symphonic
executioner to ensure he received his compensation. By this time, aged 50, his eyesight was so bad hat he put the noose
around the neck of his assistant, yet he took pride in his
achievements, when one reads the sugar-sweet biography of his
ghost-writer.A Had it not been for the war, one suspects that these women would most probably have lived normal lives with jobs, husbands and children.

It is notable that in many cases it was quite junior people who were caught, tried and in some cases executed. A lot of the more senior ones were able to escape justice. However, the Commandants of many of the concentration camps were caught and in most cases given the death penalty.

OTHER CAMPSBelsen Concentration Camp staff
A total of 190 men and 10 women were hanged at Hameln Prison (near Hanover) in Germany under British jurisdiction. The executions were carried out by Albert Pierrepoint who was flown in specially on each occasion.[The stationed hangman at Hameln, Cook,
refused to hang women, went home and shot himself. That was the only
reason, Pierrepoint was specially flown in. [There were also two British Soldiers on court-martial that refused to take women onto the gallows. Although he, Pierrepoint, finished acrimoniously over an acrimonious dispute over payment.]
Generally he was assisted by Regimental Sergeant Major O'Neil who was a member of the Control Commission there. The hangings took place in a purpose built execution room at the end of one of the prison's wings. The gallows having been specially constructed by the Royal Engineers to allow the execution of prisoners in pairs.
It was decided that those sentenced to die should suffer death by hanging for both sexes, although no standard execution protocol was agreed. Each country carried out executions in accordance with its normal procedure. This led to the use of British style measured drop hanging in private, for those executed in the British sector, short drop hanging in public or private for those in the Polish and Russian sectors and standard drop hanging in semi-private for those executed by the Americans at Nuremberg, Dachau and Landsberg. Some of the American hangings were televised and shown on the news. No women were executed in the American Sector. The accused comprised of 16 men and 16 women, including Josef Kramer,Belsen's commandant, plus 12 former prisoners (seven men and five women). The
Belsen Trial as it was known was conducted by the British Military
Tribunal at No. 30 Lindentrasse, Lüneburg, in Germany from September
17th to November 17th, 1945 under court President Major-General H.M.P.
Berney-Ficklin, sitting with five other officers. The prosecution was in
the hands of a team of 4 military lawyers and each prisoner was
represented by counsel. All the prisoners were tried together and sat in
the large dock, each wearing a number on their chest.On
the afternoon of November 16th the verdicts were delivered. Thirty one
prisoners were convicted on one or both counts and 14 acquitted of all
charges. Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath were found guilty on both
counts, Juana Bormann guilty only on the second charge. The following
day the sentences were read out to the prisoners. Eleven of them were sentenced to death and 19 others to various terms of imprisonment.The death sentences were pronounced as follows by Major-General Berney-Ficklin:"No.
1) Kramer, 2) Klein, 3) Weingartner, 5) Hoessler, 16) Francioh, 22)
Pichen, 25) Stofel, 27) Dorr. The sentence of this Court on each one of
you whom I have just named is that you suffer death by being hanged".He
then passed sentence on the women as follows "No. 6) Borman, 7)
Volkenrath, 9) Grese. The sentence of this court is that you suffer
death by being hanged."

The
sentence was translated for them into German as "Tod durch den Strang," literally death by the rope. All the prisoners were returned to
Lüneburg prison. Nine of the eleven condemned appealed to the convening
officer, Field-Marshal Montgomery, who rejected their appeals for
clemency. Elizabeth Volkenrath and Juanna Borman decided not to appeal.
On Saturday the 8th of December the appeals of the others were rejected
and the condemned were transferred toHamelnjail
the following day to await execution, being housed in a row of tiny
cells along a corridor with the execution chamber at its end. The 11
fromBelsenhad
been joined by two other men, Georg Otto Sandrock and Ludwig
Schweinberger, sentenced for the murder of Pilot Officer Gerald Hood, a
British prisoner of war atAlmelo,Holland, onthe 21st of March 1945.

The
executions were set for Friday, December the 13th, 1945 and were to be
carried out at half hour intervals starting at 9.34 a.m. with Elisabeth
Volkenrath, followed by Irma Grese at 10.03 a.m. and Juana Bormann at
10.38 a.m. The men, including Joseph Kramer, were hanged in pairs
afterwards, all 13 executions being completed by 1.00 p.m. In
view of the proximity of the condemned cells to the gallows, each one
of them must have heard the preceding hangings. A contemporary
newspaper reports stating that Elizabeth Volkenrath was executed first,
with Irma Grese second but this does not accord with Albert
Pierrepoint’s recollection of the events. Elisabeth
Volkenrath was 26 years old. She was convicted of numerous murders and
made selections for the gas chamber. She was described as the most hated
woman in the camp. Juana Borman was known as “the woman with the dogs”
and took sadistic pleasure in setting her wolfhounds on prisoners to
tear them to pieces.

The afternoon before the execution each prisoner was
weighed so the correct drop could be calculated for them. Irma Grese
smiled at Pierrepoint when he asked her age. Elisabeth Volkenrath was steady but looked nervous and Juana Bormann limped down the corridor looking old and haggard.

Ravensbrück
concentration camp.

Ravensbrück
concentration camp near Furstenberg in Germany was the only major Nazi
concentration camp for women and also served as a training base for female SS
supervisors. Some 3,500 women underwent training there. They then worked in
Ravensbrück or were sent to other camps. The camp was established in 1938 and
liberated on April 30th,
1945 by the Russian Army. The estimated number of victims there
were 92,000!
Sixteen members of the staff of were arrested and were tried between December 5th 1946 and February 3rd 1947 by a court
in the British zone on charges of murder and brutality. All were found guilty
on Monday, the 3rd of
February 1947, except one, who died during the trial. Eleven were
sentenced to hang, including five women, head nurse Elisabeth Marschall,
Aufseherin Greta Bösel, Oberaufseherin Dorothea Binz and Kapos Carmen Mory and
Vera Salvequart.
41 year old Mory cut her wrists during the night of April 9th with a razor
blade she had concealed in her shoe and thus escaped the noose. She was buried within the prison
grounds. Swiss born Mory was unusual in
that she had worked as a spy for the French, the Nazis and finally the British
before and during the War and had been sentenced to death by each in turn but
always managed to dodge her execution, by good fortune on the first two
occasions. She was a prisoner in Ravensbrück, having been reprieved by the
Nazis, and here she made the most of her situation by becoming a Kapo and
spying on other prisoners and assisting the staff. Due to a shortage of
personnel, the SS frequently used prisoners (Kapo’s) to supervise other non
German inmates.

On the 2nd of May 1947, Albert Pierrepoint hanged the remaining three
women, one at a time starting with Elisabeth Marschall who was nearly 61 years
old, followed by 39 year old Greta Bösel at
9.55 a.m. and then by 27 year old Dorothea Binz.

Elisabeth Marschall had been born on the 24th of May 1886 and became a nurse in
1909. She rose to the rank of Oberschwester
(Head Nurse) in the Revier (hospital) barracks at Ravensbrück. Here she maltreated sick prisoners and also
took part in horrific experiments. She
also made selections for the gas chambers.

Greta Bösel was born on May 9th, 1908 in Elberfeld, Germany
and was a trained nurse. She went to work in Ravensbrück in August 1944. Her
job was to supervise female working teams. She is supposed to have said: "Let
them rot if they can't work." During her trial, she made contradictory
statements about her role in selecting prisoners for the death camps.

Dorothea Binz had been born on the 16th of March 1920 in the town of Dulstarlake and had never married. She had
joined the staff of Ravensbrück in April 1939 and worked as an Aufseherin in
the women's camp before being promoted to Oberaufseherin. She was arrested in Hamburg in May 1945 and
came to trial at the first Ravensbrück trial.

The third woman, 28 year old Czechoslovakian born Vera Salvequart had
not been an SS guard, but rather a prisoner herself in Ravensbrück. She was
born on the 26th of
November 1919 in Wonotsch and had trained as a nurse. She had also
served several periods in prison. She claimed to have stolen plans for the V2
rocket and passed these to Britain.
She was sent to KZ Ravensbrück in December 1944 and as a Kapo worked as a nurse
in the camp's hospital wing. Here she was said to have administered poison in
form of a white powder to some of the patients although most survived.
Vera Salvequart petitioned the King for a reprieve in view of her passing
secrets to the British. She was granted a stay while this was considered but
the Royal prerogative of mercy was withheld and on the 26th of June 1947 she followed the other
three to the gallows, her body being buried with the rest in the grounds of Hameln prison.

The third
Ravensbrück trial, the so called "Uckermark trial", was held between
April 14th and April 26th
1948 to hear the cases of five women officials from the Uckermark
concentration camp and extermination complex.
This was a satellite camp that housed girls aged 16 – 21. Two of the women were acquitted, two received
prison terms but Ruth Closius was condemned to death. Ruth Closius, (married
name Neudeck) was born in July 1920. She had belonged to the SS guard staff of
Ravensbrück and had worked there in various capacities from the 3rd of July 1944, including work
in the punishment barracks in late 1944. She was promoted to Oberaufseherin
(senior supervisor), at Uckermark in early 1945 and worked there until the camp
was liberated. She was convicted of the torture and murder of men, women and
children and of selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. She was hanged on the 29th of July 1948.

The
seventh series of Ravensbrück trials was held between July 2nd and July 21st, 1948 to hear the
cases of Aufseherin accused of maltreatment of prisoners and making selections
for the gas chambers. Two of the six
were acquitted, two given prison terms and two sentenced to death. These were
60 year old Emma Zimmer, nee Menzel, and 36 year old Ida Bertha Schreiber (or
Schreiter) who were hanged on the20th of September 1948. No other women were executed as result of the
other Ravensbrück trials although others received death sentences which were
later commuted to prison terms.

The bodies of the first 93
executed up to 1947 were originally buried at Hameln but transferred to
Wehl cemetery in 1954. The bodies from the later 127 executions were
interred directly at Wehl.Auschwitz Concentration Camp.Auschwitz was established in May 1940,
on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, on the outskirts of the town of Oswiecim in Poland. The
Germans called the town Auschwitz and this
became the name of the camp. It was expanded into three main camps, Auschwitz I, Birkenau, Auschwitz II - Monowitz and had
some 40 satellite camps. Initially, Auschwitz
was used to house Polish political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war and
gypsies. From June 1942, it was used as an extermination camp for European Jews
who were killed in the gas chambers at - Birkenau. It is thought that around
one million people died in this camp. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.

The trial
of the staff who had been captured took place at Krakow
in Poland
in the autumn of 1947 and concluded on the 22nd of December of that year.
Twenty one defendants, including ex-commandant Liebehenschel, and two women,
Maria Mandel, head of the women's camp and Therese Rosi Brandel, were condemned
to death by the Supreme People's Court in Krakow.

SS-Oberaufseherin
Maria Mandel, a 36 year old blonde, was born at Munzkirchen in Austria in
January 1912 and joined the SS in 1938. From October 1938 to May 1939, she was
Aufseherin at KZ Lichtenburg and then from May 1939 to October 1942 she was
Aufseherin in KZ Ravensbrück. She then transferred as an Oberaufseherin to KZ
Auschwitz where she worked until the 30th of November 1944. She was moved on to KZ Mühldorf
where she continued until May 1945. Her arrest came on August 10th, 1945. She was reported
to be highly intelligent and dedicated to her work. The prisoners, however,
referred to her as "the beast" as she was noted for her brutality and
enjoyment in selecting women and children for the gas chambers. She also had a
passion for classical music and encouraged the women's orchestra in Auschwitz. The orchestra were kept busy playing at roll
calls, to accompany official speeches, to welcome transports and at hangings.

Therese
Rosi Brandel been born in Bavaria
in February 1902 and began training at Ravensbrück in 1940. She worked as an SS Aufseherin in KZ
Ravensbrück before transferring to Auschwitz
in 1942 and then to the KZ Muehldorf (a satellite camp of Dachau). She beat her prisoners and made
selections for the gas chambers. In 1943, she received the war service medal
for her work there. She was arrested on the 29th of August 1945 in the Bavarian mountains. This is a photo of her:

On January 24th, 1948, all
twenty one prisoners were executed in groups of five or six within the
Montelupich prison in Krakow. The hangings
commenced at 7:09 a.m. with
Maria Mandel and four male prisoners, Artur Liebehenschel, Hans Aumeier,
Maximilian Grabner and Carl Möckel. Each prisoner in turn was made to mount a
simple step up. When they were noosed, this was removed leaving them suspended,
slowly strangling to death. The four men were hanged one at a time, followed by
Maria Mandel. It is reported that it was 15 minutes before they could be
declared dead.
A second group of five prisoners, all men, were hanged at 7.43 a.m. with a further five men following
them at 8.16 a.m. The final
group comprising of five men and the other condemned woman, Therese Brandl,
went to the gallows at 8.48 a.m.
Again, they were hanged one by one and were certified dead 15 minutes later.
After execution, the 21 bodies were all taken to the MedicalSchool
at the University
of Krakow for autopsy and
as specimens for the students to practice anatomy on.
A further woman to be hanged at Krakow was 46
year old Elizabeth Lupka. She was born on the 27th of
October 1902 in the town of Damner
and married in 1934. The marriage was childless and soon ended in divorce. From
1937 to 1942, she worked in Berlin
in the aircraft industry before becoming an SS Aufseherin in the KZ
Ravensbrück. From March 1943 until January 1945, she worked in the KZ Auschwitz
Birkenau. She beat her prisoners (women and children) and participated in the
selections for the gas chambers. She was arrested on the 6th of June 1945 and brought to trial on the 6th of July 1948 at the
district court in Krakow where she was
convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by hanging. She was executed on the 8th of January 1949 at 7.05 a.m. in the Montelupich prison in
Krakow. Her body was also taken to the MedicalSchool at the University of Krakow
for use as an anatomical specimen by the medical students.
Margot Drexler (also given as Dreschel) was another SS Aufseherin in Auschwitz who was particularly feared by the women
inmates, whom she beat and starved to death. She had last worked at the
Ravensbruck subcamp of Neustadt-Glewe. After the war, she tried to escape but
was caught in Pirma-Bautzen in Czechoslovakia
in the Russian zone in May 1945 and hanged in May or June of that year in Bautzen. Maria Mandel
told at her trial that Drexler had made selections for the gas chambers.There are records of at least three other women who were executed.
Else Lieschen Frieda Ehrich Hildner, who had been the women's camp commandant at
Majdanek concentration camp, was hanged on the 26th of October 1948 in
the prison at Lubin in Poland. This is a photo of her:
Ruth Elfriede Hildner was tried by the Extraordinary People's Court in
Písek, Czechoslovakia on the 2nd of May 1947 and hanged six hours later,
presumably using the pole hanging method. She had been a guard at
Zwodau, a subcamp of Flossenburg, in Czechoslovakia.
Sydonia Bayer. Virtually nothing is known about this woman other that
she trained at Ravensbrück and was tried and hanged in Poland.It
is terrifying the acts that people can commit when they are out of control and
have no fear of the consequences. I suspect that these women thought that
Germany would win the war and that they would rise in the regime. Typically,
they viewed their prisoners as "Dreck," the German for rubbish and as
sub-humans. Therefore, the prisoners' lives and feelings were completely
irrelevant, and it was just a simple matter of controlling them through fear
and brutal repression. One wonders too whether they just became inured to the
continuous acts of cruelty. Many of the people tried for war crimes insisted
that they were just carrying out orders from above but this doesn't really ring
true, either now or to the judges at their tribunals, when one looks at the
acts of sadism that they visited on their prisoners.
It is easy to have sympathy with the young women from Stutthof, whose
unnecessarily cruel executions were so well documented, but one must remember
what they did.

FEMALE GUARDS Of the 55,000 guards who
served in Nazi concentration camps, about 3,700 were women. In 1942, the
first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück.
The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a guard
shortage.Female guards were generally low class to middle class and had no work experience; their professional background varied: one source mentions former matrons, hairdressers, street car ticket takers, opera singers, or retired teachers. Volunteers were recruited by ads in German newspapers asking for women to show their love for the Reich and join the SS-Gefolge ("SS- Retinue" an SS support and service organisation for women). Additionally, some were conscripted based on data in their SS files. The League of German Girls (BDM) acted as a vehicle of indoctrination for many of the women.

Bergen-Belsen
female SS guards Magdalene Kessel, Anneliese Kohlmann, Hildegard
Kambach/Kanbach, Charlotte Pliquet, Frieda Walter, Ilse Förster and
Scharführer Friedrich Hertzog bury the dead in Mass Grave 2. With them
are, as yet unidentified, male SS Administration Staff. Dated: 23 April
1945. British troops with fixed bayonets supervise the horror.There were many concentration camp guards in the Third Reich, and many
of those were female. They were every bit as brutal as male guards. Not
all have been brought to justice; in fact, one (unidentified so far) has
just been charged on
260,000 counts in September 2015 for work she did at Auschwitz as a
radio operator for the camp commandant from April to July 1944. The role
of women in the Third Reich and World War II in general is greatly
unexplored. If you believed the media and most textbooks, the only women
alive in those times were working hard in American factories or in
auxiliary Allied military units. That is manifestly false, women were a
major factor on both sides during the war.
Heinrich Himmler's SS ran the camps, so the
Germans who worked there technically were members of the SS. These
guards formed the recruiting pool for the Death's Head Waffen SS
Division, so many of the male guards eventually found their way to
the front. The women, of course, did not fight. They remained as
guards for the duration.
Prisoners were chosen to do much of the dirty work. The choice was
to either work as a "kapo," a prisoner serving as a guard who
worked under the supervision of the real guards, or to go to the
gas chamber. It obviously was an impossible choice. The kapos
became notorious for their own brutality, as they were anxious to
please their masters and, perhaps regarding some of them, had some
issues of their own.
Elisabeth Volkenrath (born 5 September 1919, Schönau an der
Katzbach, Silesia – died 13 December 1945, Hamelin) was German
supervisor at several Nazi concentration camps during World War
II. Volkenrath trained under Johanna Langefeld at Ravensbrück
concentration camp during 1941, and in 1942 went to Auschwitz
Birkenau as an Aufseherin. In April 1945, she was arrested by the
British Army and stood trial with Irma Grese. She was executed at
Hamelin Prison later that year.
It is easy to bring preconceptions about females into your mental
image of female camp guards. Don't. These ladies were as bad as
the men: they were brutal, and expressed no remorse whatsoever.
Many went to their hangings without renouncing a thing that they
had done, and only wishing that they could have continued longer.
There could have been mitigating factors. For instance, some of
the women may have been mentally infantile, or abused themselves,
or simply unaware of concepts of right and wrong. Many peasant
girls of the day were incredibly unsophisticated, and may not have
been aware of the heinous nature of their activities.

All of that was taken into account during their trials, sentencing
and execution (if found guilty of the most heinous offenses). Some
were acquitted, many were hung.
Hildegard Lächert was nicknamed "Bloody Brigitte" (Krwawa Brygida
in Polish). Many other witnesses characterized her as the "worst"
or "the most cruel" Aufseherin, as "Beast", and as "Fright of the
Prisoners." For her part in selections to the gas chamber,
releasing her dog onto inmates and her overall abuse, the court
sentenced her to 12 years imprisonment. Hildegard Lächert died in
1995 in Berlin, aged 75.

Dorothea Binz was an SS supervisor at Ravensbruck concentration
camp. Her dedication to her work was described by fellow Nazis as
unyielding. Patrolling camp with a whip in one hand and a German
Shepherd at her side, Binze made inmates fall silent upon her
approach. Whipping, beating and shooting female inmates earned her
the job of supervising torture bunkers and training guards.
Convicted of perpetrating war crimes, she was sentenced to death
and hanged on May 2, 1947. The middle picture shows what many
inmates probably saw right before they died.

Bergen-Belsen camp guard Herta Ehlert: sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Portrait taken August 1945 in Celle.February 3, 1947: After a trial lasting two months, all fifteen former members of the staff at Ravensbruck concentration camp, where 100,000 women were said to have died during WWII, were found guilty by the Hamburg war crimes court. 12 were sentenced to death. Pictured below is Carmen Mory, a “kapo” - a prisoner at the camp who was assigned by the SS to supervise forced labor. The kapos, desperate to please their evil bosses in order to avoid the gas chambers themselves, were often the most brutal of all. She was sentenced to death but committed suicide on April 9, 1947.

Carmen Maria Mory was a Swiss Gestapo double agent, who was convicted of heinous crimes, including 60 murders, in the Hamburg Trials. She was also part-Filipina. Carmen was born to an English doctor Ernest Emil Mory and his Pinay patient, Leona Bischoff. Carmen earned the unflattering nickname of “The Black Angel of Ravensbrück”. Books and movies have been created about her — such as “Carmen Mory: Hände weg von diesem Weib” which loosely translates to “Carmen Mory: Stay away from this woman”.She was sentenced to death by hanging at the first Hamburg trials but she committed suicide in her cell by slashing her wrists before justice can be carried out.

Carmen Maria Mory was a Swiss Gestapo double agent, who was convicted
of heinous crimes, including 60 murders, in the Hamburg Trials. She was
also part-Filipina. Carmen was born to an English doctor Ernest Emil Mory and his Pinay
patient, Leona Bischoff. Carmen earned the unflattering nickname of “The
Black Angel of Ravensbrück”. Books and movies have been created about
her — such as “Carmen Mory: Hände weg von diesem Weib” which loosely translates to “Carmen Mory: Stay away from this woman”.She was sentenced to death by hanging at the first Hamburg trials but
she committed suicide in her cell by slashing her wrists before justice
can be carried out.
There of course were many male camp guards, that goes without
saying. They got the noose, too.

Irma Grese, nicknamed 'The Beautiful Beast' pictured with Joseph Kramer who was commandant of Auschwitz and later Belsen concentration camps. She was hanged aged 22 in 1945 and him in 1946. One can imagine that she purposefully dressed in this schoolgirl outfit as a ruse while awaiting capture.

Irma
Grese. Defendant number 9, Irma Grese, dubbed the Beast of Belsen was
convicted for crimes against humanity at the Belsen Trial and sentenced
to death. She had been employed at various Nazi concentration camps
including Auschwitz and Belsen. At her trial survivors provided detailed
testimony of murders, tortures, and other brutal behaviour towards
prisoners, especially women. She was 22 years old when she was executed.

Johanner Altvater

Johanner Altvater (above) and Lisolotte Meirer (below) killed Jews for sport during the Third Reich

Lisolotte Meirer

This
is the reverse view of the picture at the top of this page, showing the
enormous pit into which the dead bodies were being placed by the female
guards at Bergen-Belsen. German SS women remove bodies of their victims
from trucks in the concentration camp at Belsen, Germany, on April 28,
1945. Starvation and disease killed hundreds of the many thousands
imprisoned at the camp. British soldiers holding rifles in the
background stand on the dirt which will fill the communal grave. There
appears to be a silent crowd in the distance, watching.

About Me

Dachau-Ost, (now living in Auckland), Bavaria=Bayern (Manukau City), New Zealand

It is well known that Dachau is located just North of Munich, Germany. I lived in the old SS-Hospital Haus.No 52B for 10 years. I did publish my German ID but had to delete certain entries due to Identity Theft. I am now living in New Zealand since 1956 my country of adoption, still married at the age of 85 with three great grand children,have three sons and a number of relations in America, Australia, Switzerland and Germany. Otherwise of reasonable heath, although slow in my movements. My hobbies: Travelling to other countries meeting and trying to understand other cultures, supporting a school of street kids in India for the last 25 years.